


maker's instinct

by deniigiq



Series: Blindspot and the Ordeal of Being Known [13]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), She-Hulk, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hero Worship, Homemade milk, Online Friendship, Panic, Science, not like that you bastards, should be retitled 'you've been double-hulked'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26764546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “Sam,” Leilani said. “Look at me. Buy it. Please just buy it.”Uh-huh.Make it? Did she say make it?For sure. He’d make it.(Sam makes his own soy milk for a visitor to the firm and makes an online friend he isn't prepared to have in the meantime.)
Relationships: Samuel Chung & Bruce Banner, Samuel Chung & Matt Murdock, Samuel Chung & Soy Milk
Series: Blindspot and the Ordeal of Being Known [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658656
Comments: 34
Kudos: 365





	maker's instinct

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Upupanyway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Upupanyway/gifts).



> I had a moment the other day and **upupanyway** requested some happy Sam. So here is happy Sam making soy milk. 
> 
> This is definitely not based on an actual sequence of events that happened in my house in the last month. It's definitely NOT that.

It started with a question about nuclear physics, which led to a rabbit hole Sam swore he wasn’t going to go down, but that he definitely went down, and at the end of that tunnel was a forum.

All the handles were absurd and everyone seemed to know everyone in it. Sitting along its edge, watching the internet equivalent of a knock-down drag-out fight about Vibranium’s merit as a potential superconductor while moderators repeatedly banned people for not staying nuclear-physics focused, was like watching a burning car accident from three stories up on a slow night in the city.

Sam could not look away.

Leilani asked him if he was on the dating apps again when she caught him at his desk gaping at **stableasUranium** telling **youWISHyouwereUranium** where to shove their so-called evidence. They’d broken out some serious math to help the latter get it there safely.

It was easier to say he was on the apps. So he said he was on the apps.

“Hey, we have someone of import coming,” Leilani said. “Doesn’t do dairy. Do you think—”

He was already on it, no questions asked. Just—let him finish this thread.

“Sam,” Leilani said. “Look at me. Buy it. Please just buy it.”

Uh-huh.

Make it? Did she say make it?

For sure. He’d make it.

“Sam.”

No, no. It was no trouble.

“Sammy, _please_. These are white people.”

 **youWISHyouwereUranium** let loose a solid string of capital ‘A’s and ‘H’s and Sam nearly covered his mouth at their boldness.

The audacity.

 **stableasUranium** _clearly_ had a degree in this. Likely multiple. And this guy just showed up and started laughing?

There would be hell to pay, surely.

“ _Sam_.”

“Hm?” he asked, ripping his gaze away from his phone.

“Buy the one from TJ’s,” Leilani said seriously. “Light green box. Promise me.”

“I promise,” he said.

He acquired a light green vessel from the grocery store. It was a cheap and bafflingly tasteless product, but he bought it anyways because Leilani had made him promise.

It went right in the cabinet.

No need for it to come back out.

Sam had this.

Foggy came downstairs and asked him what that horrible noise was, but Sam didn’t hear him over the sound of the blender and **cantweallplsjustgetalong** telling **stableasUranium** and **youWISHyouwereUranium** that they were technically both wrong and their argument was honestly kind of inane, not to mention out of place for a nuclear physics discussion, however if they wanted to talk about radiation’s effect on the critical temperature of Vibranium, then this recently published paper might be able to clear up some misunderstandings here.

Everyone in the whole forum yielded to this user.

Sam was transfixed by them.

They spoke in neat short sentences and called people ‘my man,’ and their text was littered all kinds of other classic New Yawk-y euphemisms. At one point, they called atoms ‘bags of lawless, mystic cats’ and Sam nearly choked.

Whoever they were, he thought that they could hold their own in nigh-indecipherable conversations with Matt in one of his more swash-buckling moods. It would be fun. Like that time Sam Wilson posted a video of Bucky Barnes and Captain America arguing over what turned out to be boiled versus roasted peanuts almost entirely in vowels.

“SAM.”

He jerked up and realized the blender was still on. Oh, god, the _beans_. All the _foam_. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Christ. Shit.

Foggy held his head in the doorway.

“I’m not asking,” he decided. “I don’t care and I’m not asking.”

**Cantweallplsjustgetalong,** Sam decided, was his new hero. The guy effectively ended the debate on Vibranium and started a new one on the social impact of nuclear energy, which turned into an all-out war that the mods, again, wept through as they tried to keep things in a semblance of order.

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong** seemed to just be shaking their head sadly at all the responses to their many, many questions. Sam got the feeling that everyone online was trying desperately to impress them and failing spectacularly.

The shame was real when **cantweallplsjustgetalong** stated simply that they weren’t sure that people were quite understanding the question they were asking, so why not move onto a different topic: how might radiation affect the optics of the universe?

Sam flopped onto his bed and held on tight.

Everything in him wanted to scream.

Bending of light was kind of his thing. Majorly his thing. And all these so-called experts were so wildly off-track with **cantweallplsjustgetalong** ’s follow-up questions that Sam had to put the phone down and scream into his pillow for a hot moment after reading posts before picking it back up.

He didn’t hear the first knock, but he heard the second one and then Matt’s voice asking through the door if something was burning.

 _The pot_.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Shit. Christ.

“Sammy,” Matt said gently. “Are you trying to self-sabotage here?”

It was _fine_. Everything was _fine_. It was just some foam that had burnt. No harm, no foul, the stove was cleaned to sparkling. The milk in the pot was bubbling along merrily, just like it was supposed to.

“It’s fine, Teach, no worries,” Sam soothed.

Matt’s brow was not soothed.

“What is that?” he asked with a chin jerk in the direction of the pot.

“Milk,” Sam said.

There was a moment of silence.

“Doesn’t smell like milk,” Matt said.

“Soy milk,” Sam clarified for him.

“Ah.”

Yeah.

“What for?”

Leilani’s threats passed through Sam’s head in slow-motion.

“Ice cream,” he lied.

Matt said nothing for a good two beats, then evidently decided to free himself from the burden of Sam being his problem.

“Hope it turns out for you,” he said.

Sam couldn’t take it anymore.

He just couldn’t take it.

All these people were missing the point that was right in front of their noses, and **cantweallplsjustgetalong** was getting increasingly fed up with spoon-feeding them all answers, and Sam just.

Couldn’t.

He made an account, named himself ‘BluesClues,’ and logged back into the forum.

His palms were sweaty and his thumbs shook as he typed and then his finger hovered over the ‘send’ button like a man examining his bungee cord with regret.

He hit the button then exited out of all his tabs, locked the phone, threw it on the bed, then threw himself out into the kitchen to go take the temp of the milk.

In the morning, he took the light green box out of the cabinet and stuffed it in his tote alongside the much fancier (much nicer) bottle of milk he’d poured late the night before in order to give his hands something to do that was not picking at his nailbeds until they bled.

The bus was crowded. People were trying to avoid each others’ gazes. There was no other socially acceptable alternative but to pull out his phone.

Curiosity took over his fingers and he automatically opened up the forum.

And there, underneath his comment from the day before, was **cantweallplsjustgetalong** ’s text saying “yes. Exactly that, Mr. Clues. I’m sorry, I don’t know that I’ve seen your username around here before. Are you new?”

The validation was enough to carry him through the whole day.

**Cantweallplsjustgetalong** asked Sam some questions that made his whole body jittery. Follow-up questions. Questions about the bending of light, which Sam quickly stated was his area, while radiation beyond light itself was really not. And yet **cantweallplsjustgetalong** wasn’t bothered by that. They said that was totally fine and they were just surprised to see a new face around, especially one that wasn’t entrenched in the field.

They asked where Sam had studied. He didn’t know what possessed him, but he said that he’d picked up the knowledge on the job.

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong** asked what research institution he worked for then.

Sam had to change shirts after he typed “sorry, I’m just a paralegal.”

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong** sent back “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Sam could have died.

By the next morning, though, he still had messages. **cantweallplsjustgetalong** hadn’t been chased off in disappointment.

He leaned his elbows on the manila folders covering his work desk and opened them as they came in over the next hour or so.

**Cantweallplsjustgetalong:** how old are you BluesClues?

 **BluesClues:** I’ll be 25 in a few months?

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong:** oh my GOD

 **BluesClues:** sorry???

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong:** no no hon it’s not your fault I just feel ancient. Wow! You’re incredibly bright and knowledgeable for someone so young

 **BluesClues:** omg thank you!

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong:** and you work as a paralegal? How did you get there? Surely there has to be a fellowship or research position near you?

 **BluesClues:** oh.

 **BluesClues:** I didn’t go to school for any of this. sorry. I don’t have any certification. I just dabble.

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong:** that’s too bad. Well, if you ever change your mind and are looking for a new gig, just give me a shout. I’m going to be working on a project in the next few years that could use some of your expertise.

FUCK.

**BluesClues:** I definitely will. Thanks Cant!

 **Cantweallplsjustgetalong:** please just call me bruce

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

No. It couldn’t be. It was a coincidence. Just a coincidence. Just a—

“ _Sam_.”

He looked up to see Leilani’s murder gaze.

Wuh-oh.

“It’s fine, just surprising!” a pleasant voice was saying in the conference room. “Really, Foggy, it’s fine. I’m actually kind of into it?”

That was not a New York accent. What friend was this?

Leilani cut her eyes at him and knocked twice on the door. Kirsten opened it with a smile.

“Heya Sam,” she said. “Jenn was just complimenting your soy milk.”

Oh? Good. It was great, wasn’t it?

“Ah. Jenn, this is Sam,” Foggy said inside the room.

Sam turned slightly to peek better inside at the guest and then nearly slammed the door shut.

She was huge.

She was tall.

She was _green_.

“Oh, Sam? Nice to meet you,” She-Hulk said, turning and setting her cup of no-doubt _very_ flavorful tea on the edge of the desk.

Hm.

Okay, yeah that was sure to be pretty…strong. Maybe a little too strong for tea. Maybe he should have just stuck with the green box. Yeah. Maybe—

“Sam’s a maker,” Foggy said. “His hobby is making anything that he can possibly buy more easily at a store.”

Sam could not argue with that A) because it was true and B) because the She-Hulk would crush him into a million Sam-particles if he came off as rude to her friends.

Matt. Matt, why didn’t you _say something_?

She-Hulk hummed.

“I understand that,” she said. “I started knitting last year. The hubris is so great. I tell myself that I can make every sweater, get way too much yarn, and then three months later I have to give up and give in and just buy the sweater.”

HHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The word of the day?

Fuck.

Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck me.

“Sorry,” he blurted out. “I didn’t—we have—there’s different soy in the fridge. Let me just—”

“No, no, I like it,” She-Hulk said, cupping her hands around the mug. “It’s fragrant. Really nice, actually.”

Hng.

“Sam, can you take these and make a copy of them?” Foggy asked, taking a folder off the desk and handing it over.

He sure could.

Okay, bye now. Forever. And ever and ever and—

The door closed and Leilani’s eyes were burning.

“Next time I say get the green one, just get the green one,” she hissed. “’Interesting’ is not what you want in a law firm, Samuel. We want ‘comforting.’”

Right, right. Okay. He got it. It was noted. He’d label it next time.

“Label it _big._ Huge. Her-sized. You feel me?”

Yeah, okay, that was fair.

But…it was good though, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Leilani? Huh? Huh, huh, _huh?_

The answering side-eye was sharp enough to cut glass.

“It’s excellent,” Leilani said scathingly. “I’m taking some home.”

Hell yeah she was.


End file.
